


Loss Ficlet: More

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [5]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 14:32:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Dates two, three, and a missed opportunity at number four results in something even better.





	Loss Ficlet: More

**Loss (Modern AU)**

**More**

**(early) June 2016**

Jamie and I were still suspended in the newness of our relationship – that time where you can remember _everything_ about each other and the building of a story together.

My second _real_ date with Jamie Fraser happened one week after the first real date. I gave him step-by-step instructions, with a demonstration, of how to eat raw oysters. He was unbothered by the jelly-like texture and lack of chewing involved in our meal, eyes instead focusing on me from across the table as the shellfish slipped down his throat.

He told me corny jokes about oysters ( _how do oysters communicate? shell-phones_ ).  Choking on my beer, I leaned over the table to kiss him. I needed to silence the onslaught of poor humor.  In response, he had sighed into my lips.

He tasted like sunshine and lemons, briny sea and hot sauce.

Later, on a meandering walk back to my flat, he admitted that he Googled “oyster jokes” before we went out.

We had a third _real_ date scheduled after Jamie returned late one Sunday evening from a business trip to Boston.  

I was coming off of a late shift at the hospital and needed to decompress.  He was wide awake with an internal clock registering a five-hour time difference.

We both pretended to be less excited to see the other than we actually were.

I had somehow allowed Jamie to talk me into indoor rock climbing at the gym that John’s husband owned. The gym was long closed and we were completely alone except for the electronic swell and thump of dance music in the background.  

Jamie easily slipped into a climbing harness, his fingers knotting and looping with a practiced ease.  

He was slower hooking me into my own harness, quiet and breathing through slightly-parted lips.  His eyes moved from his work to my eyes and back again and again. He tightened straps, tied the rope into a figure eight, and slipped the tail through the harness.  He tested and retested the knots, the carabiners, and every connection and loop, over and over.

Apparently confident with his work, he nodded and made a noise that sounded like it had growled its way out from his chest.  A resigned sort-of grunt.  

“What is it?” I asked, reaching forward to test his own harness.  I had no idea what I was checking for, but I was sure that I could identify a sloppy knot or a faulty buckle.

“Just making sure I did no’ fuck it up… I’d never forgive myself if ye were hurt–”

I silenced his doubt with a finger over his lips and shook my head. “Jamie, I trust you.”

It was true, though the jury was still out on whether I trusted this particular activity.

Jamie climbed first, reaching up and lifting himself off the ground, his feet dangling for a few moments as he chose his path upward. I was one hundred percent sure he was doing it just to show off.  My stomach went a little sour at the wall’s height, but I realized for the first time just how athletic he was.  

He climbed with a device that took the slack out of the rope as he moved up the wall so I didn’t have to belay. I was grateful not to have the gut-roiling responsibility taking care of his safety.  I was also grateful that I was allowed to watch the show.

His broad shoulders expanded as he arched against the wall, reaching effortlessly.  I could see every muscle in his upper back and arms working together. I listed them in my head: the broad, flat expanse of his flank (latissimus dorsi), the round contour of his shoulder (deltoid), the diamond of muscle that rotated his scapula (trapezius), the bulges of biceps and lean tension of his triceps.  

“Do I get a prize?” he called from the top, eyes flashing like he was the cat who got the canary.  From the ground his eyes looked almost black, not blue.  I knew that no matter what their color I would have still been awed by them – the color did not change the things he said with them.

“Why don’t you come down here and find out?” I responded, tilting my head to the side.   _Christ_ he looked good – a little sweaty, proud, huge, and looming.

With both feet planted back on solid ground, he stepped closer to me, his eyes hungry as they scanned the length of my body. “Is this my prize?”

“Hmmm.”  I did my best imitation of a purr. He swallowed hard and slipped fingers between my harness and my leggings. “What do they say about anticipation?

“It makes the heart grow fonder?”

“That’s _absence_ , Fraser.” I clicked my tongue, allowing myself to laugh _at him_ a little bit. I put my hands over his fingers.

“Och, weel, I’ve been away for five days, Claire. My heart’s all the fonder of ye for it, aye.”

He trailed off, giving a slight tug at my harness.

“Are ye comfortable?” he asked.  

Pulled out of flirtation, I realized we were still in the gym and it was my turn.  I felt myself blanch at the thought of scaling the wall. 

It must have read on my face – _a glass face_ , Jamie had called it just before his trip to Boston, because he commented, “Ye can trust me to keep ye safe, but ye dinna have to do this if ye dinna want to.”

“I’ll be okay,” I managed, offering him a slight smile.

“Well, ye’ve got the protection of my body if ye fall – I’ll no’ let ye hit the ground.”

“And if I fall _on_ you?”

“Weel, then I’ll just take yer great weight… full force… even if it kills me.”

I pushed at his chest half-heartedly, preferring his nearness to the satisfaction of pushing him away in a theatrical show of disgust at his comment.

Jamie apparently sensed my hesitancy and pressed his smile over my resigned sigh. With a firm swat on the bottom, he urged me towards the wall – his warm, dry hands on my waist.

It didn’t take me long to get halfway up the wall – my feet and hands apparently surer about my abilities than my own mind. Pausing to catch my breath, I carefully removed my hands one-by-one to wipe sweat on my leggings. I tested my balance by first only turning my head, but finally fully turned fully over my shoulder to volley some flirtation down to my climbing partner.

“James Fraser,” I said in a light voice. “I know you are using this activity as an excuse to look at my butt.”

Jamie had just shrugged and pulled the rope a bit tighter, urging me to grab another hand hold. I reached and second guessed, biting down on my lip.  Facing the wall, I suddenly came to appreciate that I was _well off_ of the ground. My enthusiasm for Jamie’s chosen activity waned considerably.

Just as I fit my toes into another grip, Jamie said, “I ken ye are using this as an opportunity to make yer arse look as tempting as possible.”

I hadn’t actually thought of somehow making said body part more alluring. But I rested my chin on my shoulder and tilted my head just enough to catch his eyes with mine. I would have popped my hip a little to reach my full advantage, but I was absolutely terrified that I would fall.  

Instead, I just scoffed. “My arse is full of virtue, _sir_. It would never purposefully entice a gentleman.”

He made a sound in his throat – midway between frustration and laughter.  I kept climbing. I made it to the top, more than a little proud of myself, and Jamie lowered me back to earth.  Looking down at him, alone in the gym with the music throbbing, I felt like we were on our own planet.  

The weightless feeling of returning to solid ground, trusting that Jamie would make my descent smooth, was the best part of the whole activity. On my feet again, Jamie slowly set about unharnessing me. First he undid waist belt. Then his hands drifted down the seams of my leggings to the loops around my thighs.  When I was free of the harness, Jamie took me off of my feet and carefully maneuvered me down onto the mat.  

“Are you proud of me?” I asked, batting my eyelashes and tangling my fingers in the sweat-damp curls at the back of his neck.

“Oh, aye.  Of course.” Then he kissed me.  When he pulled back, he quietly admitted, “I dinna need rock climbing as an excuse to look at that lovely fat arse, Claire.”

This time I soundly smacked him on the ribs, but I did not stop him from leaning over and tasting me again. This time his warm tongue dragged across me just under my earlobe.  His mouth moved deliberately. He urged my legs to wind around his waist and slipped a hand down between us to knead my thighs. 

My heart suddenly shot out of my chest and my brain switched on.

“Jamie… surveillance cameras…”

“Dinna fash… they’re no’ on.” Insistent hands urged me to arch up off of the mat and to move against him.  “They dinna… _God, Claire_ … they dinna record. They’re jus’ a—a… uh… deterrent, aye?”

“You’re telling me the truth? This isn’t going to end up on the Internet?”

Jamie laughed a little, pulling back. “No. I cannae stand the thought of sharing ye with _anyone_ , let alone the entire world.”

I had sighed at that and gave in.

We more or less came undone with only the pressure of touch and the sensation of feeling each other through our gym clothes.  There on that mat, under the shadow of the climbing wall, I found myself not just _needing_ Jamie physically, but actually _loving_ him.  In the semi-lit gym, I showed him with my body and my hands and my mouth, but didn’t say it out loud. ****

_Oh fuck.  I **loved** my fling._

We had a fourth date scheduled.  It never happened.  Instead, in spectacular fashion I showed Jamie what it would be like he chose to continue seeing a surgeon.  Our dinner plans had been thrown into question by a trauma surgery and then made impossible by an ever-evolving series of misfortunes.  

_Late nights. Broken plans. Sporadic communication. Promises. Defeat. Apologies._

The day had been slow. We spent much of the late afternoon chatting on our mobiles about work and our days.

He told me about a mouthwash ad that was giving him trouble (“ _the client wants a kiss, then some sort of magic – their word, no’ mine – to happen”_ ).  

I told him about the delicious caprese sandwich I had for lunch. He groaned into the phone and said “ _dinna make me beg for more detail; give it to me, Claire_.”  I could not help laughing and described the basil mayonnaise in explicit detail, intentionally lowering my voice and making it husky.

And then the day went off the rails with a vibration of the pager on the waistband of my scrub pants.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, my voice reverting to normal, basil mayonnaise forgotten. The promise of our date was destroyed and everything fell away.  

The empty space left by the date was filled with a thirty-seven-year-old mother’s pelvis that had been pulverized in a motor vehicle accident.

Right before I started to scrub myself clean and to empty my mind for surgery, I remembered.

_Jamie_. _Our date_. _Fuck._

I could not bring myself to cancel, so I called and made a flimsy promise. 

“ _I’ll make it, just a little late; say… 8:30?_ ” 

I had known when I said it that the promise was likely one I could not keep.

As the clock ticked closer and closer to 8:30, and I was still looking at a totally fucked up displaced fracture, I realized that it was time to cancel.  Gloved fingers inside of a body, I asked a nurse to retrieve my phone from my locker and to send Jamie an apologetic text message.

The surgery finished, patient stabilized, and family updated, I raced to the locker room. It was a little after midnight – roughly five hours past our original meeting time and three and a half hours past our rescheduled meeting time.  

I was not just hours late for our date. It was already _the next fucking day_.

I cursed over and over and over again, fumbling desperately through my handbag for my phone.  For some reason making Jamie wait for an apology only thirty seconds longer felt like a catastrophe.  The world we were building was still delicate along the edges.   _Oh, and I loved him. Fuck._

My heart sank when I finally found my phone and scrolled to my messages.

The nurse had sent Jamie a wordy, detached text. It lacked my style and resembled what I had asked for only in substance.  It missed the sentiment.

_Dr. Beauchamp is running late. She cannot meet for dinner. She asked me to text you. She said that she will call you when she’s done. She says that she is “very sorry.”_

I kicked myself for not having someone bring the phone to me. I could have spoken an apology directly to him over speaker phone, my hands hovering over a split-open human.

And _oh_ _God_ – the _quotes_ surrounding “very sorry” made the statement a mere mindless insincerity. I wrote medical records with quotes when like that when patients reported something smacking of untruthfulness. Quotes expressed a detached skepticism.  I hoped Jamie hadn’t read the message that way.

His response had been monosyllabic: _Okay._

My heart sank and my thumbs worked on a series of messages that I never sent:

_I am so sorry_ : True, but how is that enough to fix this?

_Let me make it up to you_ : And how exactly did I intend to do _that_?

_Ha – told you my life was ridiculous. Forgive me?_ : Too flippant. And what if he said “ _no_ ”?

_Wow, I really fucked this up, didn’t I?_ :I needed to manage expectations; if we were going to be together this would not be even close to the last time that this happened. ****

I dropped my phone back in my purse – needing some time to think before sending him anything.

I showered, dressed in street clothes, and caught up on paperwork in the empty doctor’s lounge.

It was a strange feeling.  On the one hand I had adrenaline pumping through me – the victory of a job well done, the thrill of being really good at what I did for a living.  And on the other I was thoroughly disappointed in myself – the knowledge that I had made a promise fully aware that I could not keep made me absolutely disgusted with myself.  

I could not face the idea of an unoccupied flat.

I did not want to have to move the lingerie I had purchased for our evening from my bed to the dresser.  

I did not want to see the slinky black dress I had intended to wear hanging on a dry cleaner’s hanger behind my bedroom door.

I did not want to create a meal out of the meager offerings of my refrigerator and eat it alone.

So I worked.

Finally, finished with all of my busywork and chewing on my lip, I typed a message: _I’m done with work.  I’m sorry that I overpromised and under-delivered. Horribly sorry. I’m guessing you’re in bed; I’ll call you tomorrow so we can talk._

I hit send and gathered my things to head home a little after one in the morning. At the exit to the hospital I stopped and let myself breathe the early summer air for just a moment.  It was just slightly cool and I rubbed my hands over my bare forearms.

And there he stood – leaning against a pillar in a pair of jeans and a navy jacket, arms crossed over his stomach. My heart sank as I walked towards him, expecting the worst. He was relaxed, lips lifting into an almost smile as I approached.  I had been so lost in my own head that I had not thought that seeing him was even a possibility still.

“Hi.” I stopped a few feet from him.

“Hello,” he responded, taking a step towards me to bridge the gap I had created.  He reached forward and slipped his thumbs into my belt loops.  Before I could register the feeling, he pulled me forward and the lengths of our bodies connected.  “How’d yer surgery go?”

“Really well.  Patient is resting… not particularly comfortably–” _oh God I was babbling and could not stop –_ “but she has a pelvis… everything is set and just needs to heal up. She’s lucky she didn’t perforate her bowel or bladder or–”

My mouth fell silent when his lips touched my forehead. He paused there for a moment, inhaling deeply. When he moved on to my right temple, I slipped my hands into his jacket to rest at his hips.  Lips moved from temple down over my cheekbone to the tip of my nose.  Now my eyes closed, a slow fluttering descent into a welcome and calm darkness.  

He finally made it to my lips and I mumbled, “ _I’m sorry_ ” into them.

“Ye saved a life.  Dinna apologize, Sassenach.”

_Saved a life_ might be a bit dramatic, but I decided to accept it.

Jamie’s mouth angled, seeking access to mine.  I granted permission by leaning forward and tentatively absorbing his warmth.  He tasted like he had been sipping whisky and eating something salty. My belt loops served as his leverage when he reached under my shirt, fingers stalling on the skin of my lower back.  

My eyes opened when he pulled back. His tongue swept across lower lip, eyes still on me.

“Ye taste like a mouthwash advertisement – I need to bottle this feeling and… well… this I can sell at work.”   _His client had wanted post-kiss magic_. My heart took a stutter-step.

Wordlessly, we started to walk, his arm slung over my shoulder and mine around his waist.  

We made it to the corner in front of my apartment and I stopped, clutching his hip and pulling him back to me mid-stride. “You should know that this isn’t an irregular thing… me getting stuck at work… making promises I want to keep but can’t.”

“That’s fine,” he said, tucking a curl behind my ear.

“Do you actually get what that means, though?” I asked, lifting my chin slightly in an attempt to hide the look in my eyes from him. “Do you really want to get into something like this with me? Late hours, canceled plans? Moods… you haven’t even seen the kind of mood I get on a _bad_ day yet. Do you actually want that?”

Jamie _laughed_ at my litany of questions. “Ye say it like I’m not already _into something_ with ye, Sassenach.”

I blinked, attempting to bring my expression under control and studying his eyes. They were sickeningly blue and shone under the streetlamps overhead. I was suddenly convinced that he was always direct; his gaze was sometimes inscrutable but it wasn’t just then.  He was pouring himself into me and I didn’t think he needed or wanted anything in return. He had, at least for a moment, the glass face that he had accused me of having.

“I… I can’t… you’re…”  Tired and a little cold in the early morning air, I lost my words.

“Ye really think this is just a fling?”

He smoothed broad palms over the goosebumps rising on my arms and shrugged out of his coat.  His scent – spicy woods, dark earth and heat – billowed out of it as he pulled it tight around me.

“I don’t… I thought you…”

“Ye thought what?” he countered, his voice dipping half an octave and taking on a more pronounced accent. “That I was just having sex with ye?”

“Jamie…” I breathed, my mind reeling and unable to fix on words long enough to actually respond.

“I dinna ken the last time I drank disgusting tea with someone just so I wouldn’t interrupt the pleasure of watching them make it. I’ve no’ ever begged someone to stay in my bed and to keep coming back. And ye really think I canna get John or David to climb a rock wall with me? Ye think I just read books to women just to sweet talk them to get into bed wit’ me?”

He paused, fingers curling behind my ear.

“I just _like_ ye, Sassenach. I like _bein’_ with ye.”

“Oh.”

He quirked an eyebrow, smirking. “I guess this begs a question, though. Are ye just using _me_ for sex?”

“ _No_.” My response was sharp, maybe a little offended.  It was the first thing to come to me easily since we walked away from the hospital.

Oh that bloody bastard. _He knew_ that I had caught feelings for him.  He may not know the depth, but he _knew_ that it was not just sex for me.  The moment I had turned on his bed that first night my fate had been sealed. I had doomed myself to care for him by simply looking over my shoulder. A reciprocal personal confession about my parents and it had ceased being about just sex for me _._

“And thus…”

“This _is_ more,” I completed, breathing uneven. I had no clue how I had gotten to that point – to where we had slowly grown into something that was not just casual. Eight weekends and _now this_.

“I’m glad ye agree, Claire.”


End file.
